Got this off a friends facebook status. Kind of long, but well worth the time.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little..
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation

Your 5 examples are exactly what our government is doing. Too bad not everyone comes to this conclusion. We will always have the group the seems to think they are entitled and the more that group grows the greater the chance we will end up like the troulbe Grece is in right now, broke and in need of bailing out. But who would bail out the US? China?

Just an FYI, i didn't write the five conclusion, that was part of the article. China has bought a lot of US bonds, and owns a lot of the debt that the US has accumulated. I honestly do not have a game plan for how the US could get out of debt. I believe that America should go back to a true free-market type economy. Where supply and demand will find its own equilibrium, instead of the government putting price controls on everything. I also believe there should be less government subsidies,

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation

End social security! It's not going to be around when my generation is old enough to collect and I am tired of paying into a failing system.

The other day I was having lunch with my boss and my assistant. My assistant thinks that its good that people who make more pay more in taxes. I likened it to all three of us eating the exact same meal and instead of it costing us all the same, my boss paid the most of the bill, I paid the next highest, and my assistant would have paid the least. Now if a person who wasn't working was eating lunch with us, we all would pay more and they would get some of our money and a free lunch.

The other day I was having lunch with my boss and my assistant. My assistant thinks that its good that people who make more pay more in taxes. I likened it to all three of us eating the exact same meal and instead of it costing us all the same, my boss paid the most of the bill, I paid the next highest, and my assistant would have paid the least. Now if a person who wasn't working was eating lunch with us, we all would pay more and they would get some of our money and a free lunch.

Yep, thatís how it works, and it's how we used to pay for things like wars and infrastructure improvements. Now we just borrow from China and send to bill to future generations.

Is this really a statement against socialism or a statement against human society in general?

Socialism would work if people weren't greedy self-centered bastards. If they truly believed in their society as a whole and worked to better it for purely the sake of creating a better place for not just themselves but for the rest of society it could work.

The problem is how to get such a society started when laziness and selfishness is widespread in all societies and cultures.

Btw, I do not consider myself to be outside of the greedy self-centered bastard part of society.

End social security! It's not going to be around when my generation is old enough to collect and I am tired of paying into a failing system.

Quote:

Originally Posted by artistic_gore

Ok, let them stay on the system until the money they paid in runs out... I'm guessing that time has already passed.

Ya good idea and while we are at it lets make sure we tax the hell out of there retirements. Heck lets take away medicare also they are old enough that they should die anyway. Might as well raise there property taxs also just in case they had any money left over.

So I guess neither of you guys have parents or grand parents that may need to collect SS some day or are old enough to already be collecting? Or should we just wait till after your relatives have collected than finish it off?

Is this really a statement against socialism or a statement against human society in general?

Socialism would work if people weren't greedy self-centered bastards. If they truly believed in their society as a whole and worked to better it for purely the sake of creating a better place for not just themselves but for the rest of society it could work.

The problem is how to get such a society started when laziness and selfishness is widespread in all societies and cultures.

Btw, I do not consider myself to be outside of the greedy self-centered bastard part of society.

Ya good idea and while we are at it lets make sure we tax the hell out of there retirements. Heck lets take away medicare also they are old enough that they should die anyway. Might as well raise there property taxs also just in case they had any money left over.

So I guess neither of you guys have parents or grand parents that may need to collect SS some day or are old enough to already be collecting? Or should we just wait till after your relatives have collected than finish it off?

Well if that's the way you want to swing it.

And no, all of my grandparents are dead and my parents are 50 and 53. All of my grandparents worked until they died though 2 of them were collecting military retirement and only working part time. My father in-law is also collecting a military pension and has some money from selling a business in the 80s. I don't know if they collect SS but I know that they didn't have to and I am fairly confident that the system will be gone before my parents are old enough to collect.

And no, all of my grandparents are dead and my parents are 50 and 53. All of my grandparents worked until they died though 2 of them were collecting military retirement and only working part time. My father in-law is also collecting a military pension and has some money from selling a business in the 80s. I don't know if they collect SS but I know that they didn't have to and I am fairly confident that the system will be gone before my parents are old enough to collect.

Thats trhe way you want to swing it. So whats the difference military retirement or SS. The govrernment pays both? Why not eliminate that also? I seriously doubt that SS will be gone before your parents are old enough to retire. There may be some changes but there are changes going on all the time. So those of us that have already paid in for 40-50 years are now just supposed to go o'well we should never have planned on getting paid back for all the money we invested? I am pretty sure that with all the money my employers and myself put into SS we should have had plenty of money to last a long time. When most of us were working we never had 401's and IRA's available to invest in ever year or maybe some of the older people would have made better choices. Good for them if they do not have to collect SS. Maybe you should talk them intop not collecting anymore so the rest of us can get some of our own money back.